Social Media Roundup: June 27, 2017

Why CMOs Are the Next Generation of CEOs

The importance of a company’s chief marketing officer continues to expand with their technology-driven, cross-functional, interdepartmental role in a brand’s growth and ongoing success. “As marketing continues to transform from cost center into revenue driver, CMO skills have become more CEO-like,” writes Sameer Kazi, CEO of Cheetah Digital, on Business Insider. One example: Kevin Hochman, who rose from CMO to president at KFC. According to Kazi, “The CEO’s imperative – to master an industry – is a complex staffing, partnership, and technological challenge. So is the CMO’s mandate of mastering the customer relationship. Marketers must curate, manage, and optimize dozens of digital channels, partner networks, and analytics platforms, and somehow discern the difference between the 5,000 marketing point solutions currently on offer. The challenge becomes exponential for enterprise marketers, who juggle multiple brands and verticals.” So as you struggle to master all these continually moving parts, file it under CEO boot camp, if that’s your goal. 

Report: State of the Mobile Customer Experience for Multi-Location Brands

“The consumer buying trends of just two years ago are dead and gone. Everything now points to a world where mobile reigns. By the latest measurements, mobile influences 56% of all offline sales – with no signs of slowing down – which means those brands that want to turn mobile consumers into customers must adjust their strategy to put mobile in-store first.” That’s how this data-rich,16-page report from MomentFeed begins. One example: 84.8% of all consumer impressions happen on assets that represent individual stores, showrooms and restaurants; just 15.2% of impressions happen on brand or corporate assets – including the brand’s own website. The report also includes tips on how to improve your mobile game with consumers. 

Mobile Marketing: 104 Facts You Don’t Know (Infographic)

While no one is foolish enough to think they know everything about mobile marketing, here are 104 “facts you don’t know” collected by WebsiteBuilder.org, presented in an entertaining, informative infographic. Topics include a timeline of mobile starting in 2000 when the first mobile ad was shared by SMS; time spent by platform; desktop vs. mobile; mobile site adoption by industry; mobile commerce; mobile advertising; mobile email; mobile shopper behavior; mobile search; and more. The links for the sources of all the gathered stats are listed at the end for further exploration. 

Empyr Debuts Cost-Per-Revenue Platform for Online-to-Offline Sales Tracking

A new platform to measure cost per revenue (CPR) for online to offline marketing has debuted from Empyr. According to the company, CPR “combines the power of customer rewards and card-linked technology to deliver real-time tracking that enables marketers to advertise online and pay only for in-store sales attributed to their ads.” Key features include the following: 

1.  Brands are marketed through digital ads displayed across Empyr’s network of 1,500 participating websites and apps, reaching more than 100 million consumers.
2.  Revenue reporting and analysis allows advertisers to track performance in real ime, from online impressions all the way through to in-store sales.
3.  The company’s card-linked technology requires no software, hardware, or staff involvement. A consumer simply pays with their linked card and is instantly notified of their reward. Cash  back is deposited monthly in the consumer’s card-linked account.
4.  The platform uses real-time, geofenced, data-driven marketing to promote brands to potential customers who are nearby.

The new platform got a thumbs-up from Rob Calderin, CMO of Heartland/Jiffy Lube, who said “it has been one of our best performing digital marketing campaigns because of the 100 percent attribution of the digital marketing spend to in-store sales. We finally are buying revenue and not ads.”

IBM Report: 10 Key Marketing Trends for 2017

Compiled with input from 10 marketing experts from IBM and 4 partners, this 31-page report from IBM’s Watson Marketing (“10 Key Marketing Trends for 2017 and Ideas for Exceeding Customer Expectations) takes a look at the present state of customer marketing, where it’s headed, and how to keep up with today’s rapidly changing marketing world. Three examples:

• Trend #2: Companies shift from “mobile strategy” to creating an engagement strategy for their customers on mobile.
• Trend #4: Marketing and ad technologies draw closer together to drive efficiency and a better customer experience.
• Trend #8: The staggering growth in dark data shifts marketers’ focus to making sense of their existing data.